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| One of Agnes Macphail's letters to her constituents |
Writing
Many records remain of Agnes Macphail's work in her writing. Agnes
Macphail's earliest published letter was to the Editor of the Farmer's Sun
in 1920 about the hospitality afforded to rural school teachers in farming communities.
From there, her career can be followed through a constant stream of columns, articles and letters published in the Globe & Mail, Farmer's Sun, Dundalk Herald, and others. As well, Agnes wrote
weekly letters to her constituency, updating her supporters about parliamentary debates, issues of the day, and anecdotes about life on Parliament Hill.
Always painstakingly private, Agnes Macphail's revelations about her feelings and family were few and consistent, and this is true of the autobiographical notes found after her death. Even My Ain Folk,
a family history Agnes Macphail penned, is made up of a series of anecdotes
that express genetic reasons for tendencies in herself. Agnes Macphail was the object of
many interviews and biographies in which her personal life is explored
but was never truly revealed, whereas Parliamentary hansards capture the
words that represented her beliefs and strong debating skills. While
many of Agnes Macphail's published works are available in newspapers and
government publications, the unpublished material is held in a variety
of archives and only excerpts are available in the public domain.
See Writing,
Scrapbooks,
Correspondence ...
in the Markdale Standard and Flesherton Advance newspapers!
